An insightful conversation with Mr. Imran Zafar, Director Enercon Systems International
Enercon Systems Intl (Pvt) Ltd is a renowned name in the Generator Synchronization & Control Industry in Pakistan. The company has been serving its customers for over 45 years globally and recently completed 10 years of local operations, Enercon is known for its premium A-grade quality work and services in the market.
During a recent conversation with Engineering Post Mr Imran Zafar, Director Enercon Systems International talked about the latest product being offered by Enercon Systems i.e. Micro-grid solutions for small and medium industries.
Traditionally a micro-grid is Industry own grid comprise of multiple sources of Power and may or may not be connected to National Grid, acting as a single and controllable entity. “The micro-grid solution offered by Enercon has the capability to run different sources of power together and switch between them so the customer can have mix of most reliable & cost-effective power Generation at any given time” explained Mr. Imran Zafar during the conversation.
The industries of Pakistan after 2001 were generously provided indigenous Natural gas for power generation. This provided a cheap source of electricity generation for the industry which was also much more reliable as compared to National grid. Many new industries did not even get connected to the national grid after that time. Later after facing excessive loadshedding of gas and the resulting blackouts and power outages many people started installation of Solar power and got connection to National Grid. But the disadvantage of solar is its inability to work effectively after sunset, or during cloudy, rainy weather while National Grid has inherent behaviour of short duration interruptions which can cause production interruption with sensitive machines.
So the industry owners were left with 2-3 sources of power generation and not one of them reliable enough to work on its own the whole time. Enercon systems international saw this gap in the market and came up with a solution for it in the shape of this micro-grid. “The microgrid we are providing can ensure that the customer can run parallel and switch between National grid, solar, generator and any other source of power as and when required considering reliability, availability and cost factors. In the day time, maximum solar is used and at night the solar can be shifted to generator without interruption. Or the customer can identify which power source is the cheapest at the time and switch to it without any power interruption” said Mr. Imran Zafar.
The microgird solution being offered by Enercon systems is special in a way because it does not have any limitations regarding brand specifications. Any brand of any company can be connected part of the micro-grid control and will work seamlessly “A very clear advantage of using our micro-grid is the ability to use products from different brands. Our micro-grid will just work as a brain to connect all different sources of power together regardless of the brand of solar or Gas generator being used by the customer,” he added
In these difficult times one of the main concerns of many customers is the cost of the product being installed as it is a new addition to the system. During the discussion Engineering Post asked Mr. Imran Zafar regarding the overall cost of the micro-grid for a customer to which he said “Our main objective is to save money for our client from minimal installation costs to utilising the most cost effective energy source and no interruption in production. The micro-grid comes in at the cost of 1-2 percent of the overall cost for energy generation which is nothing in the long run,” he explained.
